Party Pricing The cost depends heavily on how you promote your event and whether you use a caterer and provide entertainment. At the lower end, Swimme and Son spent $2,330 on last year’s picnic for 100 people. That included food, door prizes, special decorations, printing and mailing invitation postcards, and renting a tent. For its quarterly Caribbean party, Alure typically spends $5,000. On the high end, ABC Seamless of Northeast Ohio, whose picnic draws 400 people, spends $10,000.
Promotion can be as simple as postcard invitations, which Swimme and Son sent out, or as complex as a combined print, media, and direct-mail effort, like Columbus, Ohio–based Revive Home Improvement Showrooms’ blitz for its grand opening this past summer (see “Launch Window,” page 54).
If you send out invitations, are you going to request responses from people? That’ll be more important if you’re catering the event. You have to pay for the food whether anyone eats it or not, and most caterers calculate their prices on a per-head basis.
Be warned: These days, many people don’t take a request to RSVP seriously. And sometimes mail gets delayed. Darragh ended up calling friends who’d been invited because their responses didn’t arrive at EnergySwing in time.
If you decide to hire a caterer, food may well be the most expensive line item in the entire event budget. Catering costs a lot more than home cooking but saves you and your employees hours of work before and during the event. EnergySwing spent $18 per head on its catered barbecue. Food also took the biggest chunk of the budget at the picnic thrown by ABC Seamless of Northeast Ohio.
Self-catering keeps costs down and adds a personal touch. For example, one Swimme and Son employee manned the grill, and the office staff supplied home-baked desserts, just like at a family picnic.
Entertainment can help pull in people almost as effectively as good food. Benchmark Windows in Lakewood, Colo., makes music the center of its customer appreciation event with a rock concert in a public park. The most recent concert attracted 100 people. While the music was playing, employees handed out flyers advertising a special, and president George Sullivan figures Benchmark got enough work to cover the $2,000 cost of the concert, plus the company picnic beforehand, and to make some money besides.
You don’t need to become a concert impresario, though, to offer entertainment. ABC Seamless of Northeast Ohio had not only music — a three-piece combo — but a magician this year. Last year a chainsaw carver carved an entire bench that was given away in a drawing at the picnic.
Added Incentive Whether or not you choose to offer incentives depends on what you want from your event. If your goal is to simply generate good will, then incentives are a waste of money. EnergySwing and Swimme and Son don’t offer any. ABC Seamless of Northeast Ohio doesn’t publicize incentives heavily, but it does give away a weekend trip and merchandise.
Benchmark Windows hasn’t used incentives but is considering the idea: “We’re thinking about giving everybody who comes to the concert dinner for two at a nice restaurant, if we give a demo to both members of the couple,” Sullivan says.
On the other hand, Alure considers incentives a major weapon in its marketing arsenal. Customers can earn points toward assorted prizes by buying, referring — or going to the Caribbean parties, which nets 10,000 points. Top prize? Well, 200,000 points wins a trip to Cancun. Last year, some half dozen customers collected it.
Keeping in mind that saying thank you is central to a customer appreciation event, Darragh has sent out a thank-you letter to everyone who attended EnergySwing’s barbecue. He’s demonstrating not only good manners but good business sense. The letters tell customers that the company appreciates their business and offers a discount on purchases of more than $2,000. —Diane Kittower is a freelance writer based in Rockville, Md.